I have 15 losing contest designs and notes on why each lost. What could they become?
Posted by Abdullah · Location-independent
I have 15 design entries from Freelancer contests that I lost (12 lost, 3 contests were removed). Logos, two book covers, a restaurant menu, social launch posts, a bus ad, a homepage design and an automation plan. All from the last two weeks.
I'm a former game developer from Pakistan, not a trained designer. I made them with Claude (an AI) as my design partner; I did the judging, choosing and fixing. Nothing transfers to the client unless you win, so these are still mine. Most carry the client's name, so they can't be used as they are, but the layouts and ideas can.
Next to them I kept a plain log of every result: our stars vs the winner's, and the lesson in one line. "Subtle lost to bold." "We led with an AI mockup scene and got rejected without a comment." "The winner shipped a live website; we sent pictures." After 12 losses in a row, those lessons got me my first two wins.
Right now the whole drawer just sits on my hard drive. If it were yours, what would you turn it into: templates, a "spot why it lost" quiz for new designers, something for small businesses, or something else?
I have 15 design entries from Freelancer contests that I lost (12 lost, 3 contests were removed).…
Why I’m posting this
I keep my losing designs to learn and improve, since I'm not a designer. Curious what else they could become.
Free public Ideas
Love the fact you actually collected the feedback and learnt from the experience, well done! You must not be the only one who has a lot of "failed" designs, maybe it's worth some thought? A platform where people can choose from those and buy them cheap? Or maybe put them on fiver with fixed price?
Or some crazy-er idea - can gamify it since you are a game developer - so designers can train their skills by looking at designs and either guess why those failed or apply fixes until the designs actually work?
Oh and also you can share your findings here and be part of a book!
Suggested post: I’m writing a book on visual design for developers. Would you like to be part of it?
One thing I'd love to see is what happened after you started winning. Could you take three of your early losing entries, redesign them using everything you've learned, and show the originals alongside the new versions? The comparison would probably teach more than a list of design rules. You could even ask other designers to critique both versions without revealing which came first.
Ideas are free public suggestions. Proposals are paid and private and are never shown here.